Comments on: Spend your weekend thinking http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/popsmart/2008/02/08/spend-your-weekend-thinking/ OMIGOD!! a Creative Loafing A&E Blog Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:55:52 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Rebecca http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/popsmart/2008/02/08/spend-your-weekend-thinking/comment-page-1/#comment-948 Rebecca Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:58:20 +0000 http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/popsmart/2008/02/08/spend-your-weekend-thinking/#comment-948 My favorite piece in the show has got to be Gabriel Kuri Untitled (superama), 2003. An everyday object captured on a grand scale draws your attention to it magnificently: the mundane magnified. And what does this magnification show us? The very mundane things a person from Mexico would buy at a Wal-Mart, Cheetoes being obvious among them; cheap American commodities that can be bought in bulk at an "everyday low price." The implication of Wal-Mart, indeed its success, is built around a cultural attraction and fixation on abundance. The artist's choice of specifically a Wal-Mart receipt makes itself an example of the tendency in "low-culture" for cheap excess that is often embraced in Hispanic culture (a theme carried out throughout the exhibit). Creative Loafing blogger Felicia Feaster suggests that Kuri's use of the woven Wall-Mart receipt creates "a funny homemade document of the temple of mass-produced, machine-made, anti-handicraft." I agree with Feaster in that the piece contrasts handmade art with mass-produced commodities, however, her assertion is short-sighted and the piece's implications are far from funny. Feaster's comment assumes weaving is universally a "handicraft" and that it would be conceivable for someone to create this sort of tapestry in the comfort of one's home. As a result, Feaster misses the broader context this piece directs the viewer towards. There is nothing home-made or handicraft about Gobelin. Gobelin refers to a tapestry style and manufacture created by the Gobelin family in France in the 15th century. The Gobelin family manufactured works depicting traditional scenes and many of the activities of the French aristocracy. Many of the works were purchased for Louis XIV. In Kuri's choice of technique, we again see a reference to culture of excess, but in this case it is historical and inherently Western in inception. What we begin to see in visual content of this piece is a Wal-Mart receipt, a contemporary reference to the tendency in "low-culture" to desire cheap excess, combined with a technique that points at the historical root of this urge that is not genuinly Hispanic, but a colonial imposition of European ideals that is in part responsible for the crisis of identity among other issues within Latino and Latin-American culture. My favorite piece in the show has got to be Gabriel Kuri Untitled (superama), 2003. An everyday object captured on a grand scale draws your attention to it magnificently: the mundane magnified. And what does this magnification show us? The very mundane things a person from Mexico would buy at a Wal-Mart, Cheetoes being obvious among them; cheap American commodities that can be bought in bulk at an “everyday low price.” The implication of Wal-Mart, indeed its success, is built around a cultural attraction and fixation on abundance. The artist’s choice of specifically a Wal-Mart receipt makes itself an example of the tendency in “low-culture” for cheap excess that is often embraced in Hispanic culture (a theme carried out throughout the exhibit). Creative Loafing blogger Felicia Feaster suggests that Kuri’s use of the woven Wall-Mart receipt creates “a funny homemade document of the temple of mass-produced, machine-made, anti-handicraft.” I agree with Feaster in that the piece contrasts handmade art with mass-produced commodities, however, her assertion is short-sighted and the piece’s implications are far from funny. Feaster’s comment assumes weaving is universally a “handicraft” and that it would be conceivable for someone to create this sort of tapestry in the comfort of one’s home. As a result, Feaster misses the broader context this piece directs the viewer towards. There is nothing home-made or handicraft about Gobelin. Gobelin refers to a tapestry style and manufacture created by the Gobelin family in France in the 15th century. The Gobelin family manufactured works depicting traditional scenes and many of the activities of the French aristocracy. Many of the works were purchased for Louis XIV. In Kuri’s choice of technique, we again see a reference to culture of excess, but in this case it is historical and inherently Western in inception.

What we begin to see in visual content of this piece is a Wal-Mart receipt, a contemporary reference to the tendency in “low-culture” to desire cheap excess, combined with a technique that points at the historical root of this urge that is not genuinly Hispanic, but a colonial imposition of European ideals that is in part responsible for the crisis of identity among other issues within Latino and Latin-American culture.

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